planted city

Three paragraphs from writer Tom Vanderbilt’s first article (‘The Crisis in American Walking’) in a great four-part series for Slate magazine, ‘Walking: America’s Pedestrian Problem’. 

(Photo credit: The Washington Post via Slate)

From The Economist:

For years urban planners have emphasised the needs of the motorist over those of the pedestrian. Thanks partly to greenery, partly to a greater understanding of how pedestrians behave, and partly to concerns about social cohesion, priorities are changing.

London provides two good example of this shift. On February 1st Exhibition Road, a landmark street near many of the city’s museums, is being formally reopened after a three-year construction project to turn it into something that transport engineers like to call a “shared space”. Kerbs have been stripped out, along with the usual road markings, to create a thoroughfare that is designed to be shared by cyclists, pedestrians and cars alike. The idea, adopted from continental Europe, is to create an area which is not just more pleasant for people on foot but also safer because it encourages drivers to pay closer attention to their surroundings. 

Less experimentally, big improvements have already been made to Oxford Circus, one of the city’s busiest intersections. The junction between Oxford Street and Regent Street sees as many as 40,000 people pass through every hour, and only 2,000 vehicles. Until 2009, however, pedestrians came well down the pecking order. In the language of planners, pedestrians were unable to follow their desire lines, the paths they want to take as opposed to the ones they are meant to. At Oxford Circus, giving rein to people’s desire lines has meant ripping out guard railings that hemmed pedestrians in and allowing people to cross the junction diagonally as well as from side to side (a feature known as a pedestrian scramble). 

Check out the rest of the article here. The Independent’s ‘Walk on the wild side: Pedestrians could soon be on equal footing with cars’ and the Guardian’s ‘Exhibition Road, London - review’ both profile the pedestrianization project and are worth a look.

(Photo credit: The Guardian)

Here are a few more shots I’ve taken around #Vancouver over the last few months. If you’d like to see any of ‘em larger just click on the picture you’d like to see.

Steven

P.S. I’d love to take a look at an album from around your town. I used the tag ‘#my town’ in case you’re interested in doing the same. 

From Atlantic Cities:

New research from Southern California has found that residents of neighborhoods with a central core of shops and services – a pattern typically found in older, traditional communities – walk nearly three times more often than do residents of neighborhoods whose nearest shops and services lie along a major arterial roadway, a pattern typically found in newer suburban development.  Residents of traditionally styled and centered neighborhoods also drive less than their counterparts residing in the newer pattern.

This is true even when the data are controlled for individual and household economic and demographic characteristics.

…

Notably, the residents of the centered neighborhoods were found to take shorter trips, suggesting that walkable proximity – both closeness and a safe, direct walking route – to shops and services is also important. It may not do much to encourage walking, for example, if the dry cleaner’s is a quarter mile away as the crow flies but you have to travel two or three times that far navigating busy roads around the subdivision to get there.

Check out the rest of the article here.

(Photo credit: Calgary Herald)

I’ve added some bold-facing to the post below for emphasis in addition to a couple of quotes that get at why we all need to speak up about building a future in which we can thrive:

“The problem is that the policy makers the world over are paying more attention to the fossil fuel lobbyists than they are to the well being of young people and nature, as my colleagues and I have described in the paper “The Case for Young People and Nature”.

Until the public demands otherwise, the policy makers will continue to serve their financiers.”

                                      ~ NASA climate scientist James Hansen

“… climate-related legislation is one of those things which will create a large mass of winners with relatively little present-day political clout (us, our children, and our children’s children), alongside a small number of losers with extremely deep pockets and extensive lobbying arms.”

                  ~ Reuters blogger Felix Salmon in his article, ‘The Depressing Politics of Climate Change’.

onearth:

Tomorrow is Moving Planet. If you care a lick about preserving a climate that allows for a healthy, safe, peaceful, and prosperous future, you should get involved. With thousands of events in 171 countries around the world, the chances are there’s something going on near you. Here’s blog editor Ben Jervey’s take on why mass climate action is still absolutely necessary and more important now than ever.

Infographic: Commuting in Canada, by the numbers

(Credit: Globe & Mail)

A key paragraph from a recent Globe & Mail article, ’Drivers, want more space on the roads? Push for bike lanes’. Co-written by urban planners Ken Greenberg and Trent Lethco, the article explains why increasing walking, cycling and transit use are central to improving the efficiency and sustainability of our urban transportation systems. It also serves as a great compliment to an iconic image from Muenster, Germany showing the amount of urban space occupied by different modes of transport. 

Jane Jacobs is a bit of a big deal in urban planning circles. Her legendary book, ‘The Death and Life of Great American Cities’ (1961), is one of the field’s seminal texts and is a passionate defense of traditional cities and neighbourhoods against modernist planning practices (e.g. urban renewal, expressways, sprawl) and thinking. Part of the beauty of the book is the way she explains how sidewalks, short blocks and buildings that vary in age, density and use all play integral roles in sustaining streets, neighbourhoods, cities and the people that inhabit them.    

Jacobs was self-taught, wrote books on a range of topics (e.g. The Economy of Cities, Cities and the Wealth of Nations, Dark Age Ahead) and was an ardent supporter of cities, neighbourhoods and community engagement throughout her life. In the video above she talks about creating healthy and sustainable cities and learning the lessons of our past.

(Credit: Robert Wood Johnson Foundation via Grist)

‘To Curb Driving, Cities Cut Down on Car Parking’

From National Geographic:

Bit by bit, for the past 40 years, the city of Copenhagen has done something revolutionary: The Danish capital has reduced its parking supply. Cutting the total number of parking spaces by a small percentage each year stands in stark contrast to the more common pattern of cities adding more and more parking to accommodate private cars. 

But in a few pockets around the world, momentum is growing behind efforts to bump out large parking lots, curbside parking, and garages in favor of services and infrastructure for pedestrians, cyclists, and public transportation.

“There’s no demand for parking, per se,” said parking policy expert Rachel Weinberger, assistant professor of city and regional planning at the University of Pennsylvania. “There’s demand for access to a location.” If a private car is the only way to access a given restaurant, shopping center, workplace, or neighborhood, she argued, then “that translates to demand for parking.” 

Cities around the world are recognizing that managing parking is an effective, if indirect, means of addressing concerns about energy and traffic congestion—indeed, climate change. In fact, according to research from the Paris-based firm Sareco, people choose their mode of transportation for urban trips based on the parking conditions at their origin and destination.

Check out the rest of the article here.

(Photo credit: National Geographic)